Bake 5 Fabulous Fall Desserts, and Save Time and Money in the Kitchen!

Fall is in full swing, and if you’re in the mood for baking, you’ve come to the right place. Below you’ll find 5 tried-and-true traditional fall recipes, made with apples, pumpkin, blueberries, butterscotch, and of course, chocolate. Following the recipes are some great baking tips and money-saving ideas. Read on!

Pumpkin Pie
Pumpkin Pie is a must-have on Thanksgiving, and if you want to serve up a home-baked, traditional pie, here’s the recipe for you. Chances are you’re going to have your hands full with making the turkey and trimmings, so save yourself the extra time associated with putting together a homemade crust and go with a refrigerated store-bought one instead. (CoolSavings currently has a printable coupon for 50 cents off 2 packages of Pillsbury Refrigerated Pie Crusts.)

Apple Pie
Pillsbury offers this recipe for Perfect Apple Pie, which provides the classic apple pie flavor many of us grew up with, but with the convenience of – you guessed it – refrigerated pie crusts.
You can also easily turn this into Caramel-Pecan Apple Pie by following the simple instructions at the bottom of the recipe: Immediately after removing pie from oven, drizzle with 1/3 cup caramel ice cream topping. Sprinkle with 2 to 4 tablespoons chopped pecans.

Blueberry Muffins
Want to bake some blue-ribbon winning muffins? Make these! The cinnamon and sugar coating on top is what makes them stand out.

Ingredients:

7 TB unsalted butter

1 ¼ cups sugar

2 eggs

2 cups flour

½ tsp salt

½ cup milk

2 tsp baking powder

1 pint blueberries

2 TB mix of cinnamon and sugar (see note below)

Cream butter and sugar together until well blended. Beat in eggs, one at a time. In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt and baking powder. Add, alternately with milk, to the egg mixture. Crush around ½ cup of the blueberries with a fork, and mix them into the batter. Gently fold in the remaining blueberries.

Pour the batter into greased muffin tins and sprinkle tops with the cinnamon and sugar mix. Bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.

Remove muffins from pan immediately, and cool on a wire rack. Makes approximately 12 muffins.

A few words of advice for this recipe: These tend to stick to the pan so we recommend using tin or paper cupcake liners so you get the best results for all your hard work. Also, the amount of cinnamon called for in the topping may be a bit much for your liking. Either make the entire amount of topping and save some for a future batch (you’ll surely want to make one!) or make a little less up front. Feel free to use frozen blueberries, which may be a more convenient and less expensive alternative to fresh ones.

Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars
CoolSavings editors have made these Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars time and time again, and they get rave reviews. Baking the batter in a jelly roll pan and simply cutting the finished product into squares is so much quicker than scooping and spooning to make regular cookies!

Our notes: You can add in 1 cup of chopped nuts. For softer, chewier bars, we recommend you start testing for doneness between 15 and 20 minutes.

Oatmeal Butterscotch cookies
As much as we all love chocolate, butterscotch is a yummy, welcome alternative. For some sweet and comforting Oatmeal Butterscotch cookies, follow the directions in this recipe for Quaker’s Best Oatmeal Cookies, but stir one cup of butterscotch chips into the batter.

Like with the chocolate chip cookie bar recipe above, these too can be made in a (9x13) pan and cut into bars, per the instructions at the bottom of the recipe. Word to the wise: If you’re going to batch these up to give to friends or take to a potluck, do it quickly, as your family will likely be eating them up right from the oven! They smell heavenly while baking so everyone will be waiting in anticipation.

We are biased toward cookie bars because of the time-saving and convenience factor. However, if you are determined to make regular cookies, cookie scoops are worth the investment because they enable you to quickly create uniform sized scoops of dough for the cookie sheet. Pampered Chef sells this Medium Scoop and this Large Scoop , both of which we guarantee will make your cookie baking days much easier. (Also, have you ever spent a lot of time and effort to put together a pie, only to have the edges of the crust turn out burnt? This handy $7.50 Pie Crust Shield will prevent that from happening and is well worth the investment!)

If you’re slicing a lot of apples these days, check out this handy Apple Wedger from Target for just over $10. It’s a great time saver.

Money-saving tips:

Find coupons for your baking ingredients. Since fall is such a popular time for baking, there are plenty of coupons available for pie, cookie and cake recipe ingredients. Browse through CoolSavings’ Printable Grocery Coupons before heading out to the grocery store. Also, be sure to check the Sunday newspaper coupon inserts which contain some valuable baking coupons at this time of year.

Compare prices. Take the time to compare prices at a few different stores, as baking ingredients can be quite pricey. It’ll be worth your time to see your savings add up!

Do you bake often? Well, then stock up! Buying big bags of almonds, pecans, chocolate, and the like may save you money in the long run. And when you suddenly get a craving (or a request) for a certain homemade dessert, there’s nothing better than realizing you already have all the ingredients on hand!

Swap ingredients when possible. Borrow that cup of sugar! Are you close with a neighbor who also bakes? If you need a small amount of an uncommon ingredient (like cloves?), for instance, check if she has it before heading to the store to buy a whole container of it. Tell her you’re happy to reciprocate when possible.

Share the Goodness! Do you have a favorite fall dessert recipe? Post it on our Community page for our community members to see!